Nothing would be more expected to make any politician toe the
standard line on 9/11 than being confronted by a NYC policeman who
was himself a 9/11 first responder.

A back-and-forth this afternoon at a Meredith, New Hampshire
town hall meeting is instructive about what kind of politician Ron
Paul is. It occurred in a hotel meeting room jammed far beyond
comfort with 500-600 people. You need to show up an hour early if
you want a seat or to avoid being sardine-crammed in a back corner
these days at Ron Paul event.

During the Q and A, a man identified himself as having two jobs:
a professor of American constitutional history at a community
college, and a New York City police officer who had been a 9/11
first responder. As part of his question to Paul, he said: “A lot
of people like what you say about the Constitution and domestic
policy but go on the defense in terms of what you say about foreign
policy and especially 9/11…what can you say to reassure
them?”

It seemed to hearken back to what is in many ways the origin
story of the Ron Paul revolution: the moment in May 2007 at a GOP
debate when Ron Paul shocked Rudy Giuliani, then the frontrunner,
with the idea that American policies and behaviors may have had
some influence on the fact that 9/11 happened.

Part of Paul’s response today: “It was shortly [after 9/11] that
we had a vote to give the president the authority to go after the
individuals responsible for it, which I strongly
supported. 

“But I did not believe for a minute that authority should have
been used the way it was used. It was used to go to war against
Iraq, oh yeah the Iraqis were involved…it was used to do things
like the Patriot Act which was already floating around…We can’t
just fly off and do things that are more harmful, we have to do
things that defend this country. [With all our bases around the
world] we are not doing ourselves much of a favor because we don’t
have any money.

“One thing important about the evaluation of 9/11 was that one
thing Paul Wolfowitz, a big orchestrator for the war, for going
into Iraq, as soon as that happened, within days he said you know
what? This gives us a chance to get our troops out of Saudi Arabia,
because Bin Laden is using that as a recruiting tool….our troops
in Saudi Arabia are seen as in the Holy Land used as recruiting
tool by Bin Laden to do us harm. So we took troops out of Saudi
Arabia, but they don’t understand that troops in Muslim
countries…are still inciting people, we go into Pakistan with no
authority whatsoever and launch these bombs, go after one, two,
three people, the bad people and have innocent people killed. The
best way to look at that is ask, how would we react if someone did
that to us?”

That drew out long, huge applause

Paul went on. “I very much want to be engaged [with the world],
but in a different manner. I don’t want to be engaged by acting
like a bully, if they do what we say we bribe them, give them more
money, if we don’t we start a war with them and occupy their
country. I’m sick and tired of that…we need to influence the
world with our goodness, our goodness will be spread if we do a
good job, if we have freedom, prosperity and civil rights here in
this country and we mind our own business and we don’t go around
bullying people maybe people will see us as an example…this is so
much different than what we are doing today.”

That got more huge claps and long cheers.

That famous Paul/Giuliani dustup from May 2007:

More from the Ron Paul New Hampshire campaign trail will be
coming soon here on Hit and Run and in the April issue of
Reason. In the meantime, pre-order my forthcoming book,

Ron Paul’s Revolution.